2006-09-21

Identity

The lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz has filed over 40 cases against writers who have considered the Armenian genocide in their work, accusing them under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code of insulting "Turkishness" ("Turkianity"? "Turkitude"?). Today he lost one more case, against the novelist Elif Shafak. The value of Article 301 aside, the frequent repetition of cases like this would seem to raise the question of why Mr Kerincsiz believes that he is defending a culture by incessantly attacking the people who contribute to it.